The main reason for my hiatus is Costa Rica. I spent the last two weeks of January overseas. First stop was in Oregon to visit my sister and sister’s husband and parents, and then I spent a week with the parents in Costa Rica for good measure. It was magical. I was exploring this lush, gorgeous landscape where orchids are so happy they grow naturally from trees. Treetops were populated with enormous lounging iguanas, quiet brown lumps that were actually napping sloths, and toucans bleating weird diatribes at each other. Unlike Japan, I was much much worse at the language, and there were so many new cultural mysteries to explore. Best of all, I was there with my folks, listening to my mom rattling off hummingbird species names and my dad chatting up taxi drivers in cobbled together Spanish. It was heaven.
Now I’m back in Japan, still with about the same 500-ish kilometer count on the MCT I had at the beginning of the year. I’ve got enough money to support a couple of longer multi-day hikes, and that’s before I get the money I’m owed by April for translating the last couple of MCT maps for the Ministry of Environment. What’s more, I’ve just found out that stays for many spots in Iwate should be deeply discounted by a “fukko-wari” discount (fukko = recovery or reconstruction) until March 1st. (See English explanation on Facebook here) It’s a sign I should get back in gear.
But where to?!
Fukko-wari discount or no discount, I really want to go back to stay at Kame House in Ishinomaki because it’s affordable, warm, relaxed, and has two yappy dogs as hosts. I also haven’t walked the Ishinomaki (Kitakami, Kahoku, Ogatsu) section, so I figured I could walk that in sections and then return to Kame House at night. Unfortunately, that entire area is far away from the train line and I would need to cobble together a way to get back to a station during a hike using four, count them, four bus lines. Five if you count the possibility of taking a Minamisanriku bus down and starting at Kamiwarizaki. The model courses unhelpfully only cover short 10-15 km parts of this area, maybe because whoever planned them realized there was no way to cover the whole thing without camping in unofficial spots overnight. I don’t know. I’ll just put this part off for a little bit longer in the hopes that it starts to make more sense, and/or it gets warm enough to just camp in the bushes.
Therefore, I think the most viable plan is starting in north Ofunato and heading north through Kamaishi and maybe Otsuchi. This is all in Iwate, so I should be able to use the fukko-wari and/or stay in Ofunato Guest House, which is cheap in the first place. I could also maybe stay in Sato Inn in Otsuchi, which has been trying so so so so hard to attract foreign tourists with an English Twitter presence. Sato Inn is the reason I’d heard about the fukko-wari discount in the first place, so it’s even more fitting that I should stay there.
It’s a little difficult for me to get back into gear, get back into “MCT mode,” and resume hiking. It’s cold. I’ve barely managed to heal my back from an injury in January, and am worried more activity will wreck it again. And sometimes I wonder why I’m hiking this trail and writing this blog. Is this making me into a better and more confident person? Is it benefiting me professionally? Is it actually serving as a tool for other hikers? I’m really not sure.
No matter what, I should be proud of myself. I have accomplished a lot. I am behind the main content on the English website and each English map. That is the result of hours and hours spent working since 2015 because I felt strongly that quality English maps needed to happen. I made the map enabling you (and me) to find places to stay. I moderate the Facebook group you use to ask questions. I’m the one providing you with English information about damage from the typhoon. There’s a very good chance I’m giving input on the English answers you get from Natori Trail Center about your upcoming hike. If there’s a pie somewhere having to do with the Michinoku Coastal Trail, my finger is in it. I’ve also successfully hiked half the trail.
This is what I’ve always wanted to do. I still very much want to do it. My husband is supportive. My cat is not supportive, but he’s a cat. I am capable of doing it, time-wise and financially. Therefore, it is a legitimate use of my time. I do not need a guaranteed shiny new soul, or book deal, or lifelong lucrative career or anything to justify this activity. I need to stop being my own enemy and working against myself on this. The goal of walking the trail is walking the trail, and that’s a good enough reason why.
The original plan went as follows: move to Shibata Town in mid-September. Take second hiking trip in September, but get back in time for husband to volunteer in Kamaishi for the Rugby World Cup. Continue to stay at new home holding down the fort with cat because husband would then take a 9 day trip to New Zealand. After husband returned on the 8th, I would spend 4-7 days with him before taking off to spend the last half of October hiking the trail. We’d taken this staggered approach with one person traveling and the other staying at home because our cat got stress pee with trace amounts of blood in it the last time we put him in cat jail at the vet’s. We figured that once we settled in here we could find ourselves a nice pet sitter who could come to the apartment to check up on him.
Just as I was getting ready to make some last-minute plans for my next trip, we got wind that an enormous typhoon was going to hit Japan, and Miyagi was on its path. In fact, because it was so huge most of Japan was going to be on its path. At this point, we weren’t expecting it to be so bad, but we did the right things just in case. We looked up Shibata Town’s hazard map, which showed that if the nearby rivers flooded our apartment was in the inundation area. We independently noticed that the designated shelters weren’t necessarily on higher ground. I plugged in our portable phone chargers and filled some containers with water.
I started to really worry at 7:00 PM, when the city told us they recommended evacuation. Abukuma River, which is very close by to us, was expected to get high water. I’d only ever gotten a notice to prepare to evacuate. They were saying we should go to a shelter or a safe place. Where would that be? Was our apartment a safe place? I started filling Futo’s hiking pack. The final packing list was as follows: two pairs of socks, two pairs of undies, a cardigan, a raincoat, the tent and sleeping back that were already in the pack, a flashlight, a windup radio (thanks mom), 6 meals worth of emergency rations, some leftover bread, a water bottle, my passport, 7 packets of cat food, the cat’s dry food, two bowls for cat’s food and water, cat’s litter box, half bag of cat litter, 2 towels, toothbrush and toothpaste, daily medicine.
The city ordered us to evacuate at 8:30. Not just us, the entire city was evacuating. The entire city? That couldn’t be right. Futo was saying that going to our designated shelter wouldn’t do us any good, since it wasn’t on higher ground. I was tempted to just go there anyway–if the city said it was the shelter, shouldn’t we just trust them?–but on the other hand, I just wanted to get away from the river. We were less than 10 minutes by foot from the river, both of them, Abukuma River and Shiroishi River. One of them was turning horrible purple colors on this map that showed in color code how alarmed we should be about the rivers. Also, we were evacuating with the cat, and none of the shelters were marked as pet-friendly, so no matter what one of us was going to be staying in the car with the cat anyway. Why not stay in the car with the cat on higher ground?
Futo was the one who knew where higher ground was in the area and knew how to get there. We agreed on a spot inland and on higher ground. I stuffed our cat Satsuki into a carrier and started packing the car as Futo went to get more things from the house. At first Satsuki did his usual trick of resisting the carrier by flailing around wildly and then somehow rendering his body at least 3 times heavier than it normally is. He was wailing on the way to the car, but I had to put his carrier down briefly on the ground during the typhoon to put his litterbox and the pack in the back seat, and the poor thing went completely silent.
Futo got back to the car, and we started to head for the planned location, the golf course or whatever it was, but the road behind our apartment was already filled with more than a foot of water, so Futo abandoned that plan and decided to go to Shibata High School. At that point, Route 4 hadn’t filled up with water but it getting there, and thanks to Futo’s driving we made it to the hill with the high school. The high school grounds were closed, but there was a swimming pool on the same hill, so we pulled into the parking lot. There were maybe six cars when we pulled in, but as the night progressed, more and more cars pulled in. By dawn, there were about 30 cars.
We were terrified of Satsuki escaping the car and running off into the mountains to be eaten by the first creature he encountered (Wada Satsuki, strength: 1 intelligence: 0 cuteness: 10 fangs: 11) but we didn’t want to keep him stuffed in the carrier all night, so we finally let him out. He was surprisingly good about the whole ordeal, and spent the better part of the night sitting on our laps as we tried to sleep. The constant headlights and car movement did freak him out a bit, as I’m sure the typhoon also did, since it was shaking our car around to the point where I was wondering if we were going to tip over if we didn’t float off. The car seats made a very good claw sharpener, however, and we were both there to provide pets and laps, so amazingly Satsuki spent a lot of time looking pretty relaxed and stretched out. The next morning, he gladly ate some of his dry food and even drank some water. He did not, however, pee or otherwise use the litterbox. I guess cats hold it in if they don’t feel safe.
We somehow managed to doze off in the front seat. I emailed my relatives with some of my phone’s remaining battery–I’d brought chargers, but no cord to connect the phone to the chargers. The city and prefecture advised us in the middle of the night via text that Abukuma River was at dangerous levels and to evacuate or at least try to escape to the second floor. Futo went to lie down in the back of the car for a bit and reported it was surprisingly nice. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get to sleep again, but when he told me to try it for a bit I fell asleep for the better part of the night. Satsuki slept with Futo in the front seat.
After sunrise the next morning, we could see that the nearby land overlooked by the parking lot was flooded. A house partly submerged to the first floor was visible. The road down to Route 4 was barely above water. The nearby driving school was safe but the driving course was almost completely under water. We could walk down to Route 4 to see that the road back to our apartment was blocked: it was filled with water, with about six partially submerged cars floating in the water. I wasn’t sure how long we would be on the hill. The stations we could pick up on the crank radio weren’t reporting news specific to Shibata, since such a wide swath of Japan had been hit so hard.
There were encouraging signs. First, a self-defense force vehicle drove into the parking lot and a soldier came by with a phone, obviously counting cars. This meant someone knew we were there. The vehicle drove back out after a bit, which was completely expected considering there were people who needed to be rescued. For the first part of the morning, cars would exit the parking lot only to return less than five minutes later, but as time passed more and more cars would leave and not return. They were obviously managing to go somewhere.
Finally, a really unexpected twist was that the pool opened. It opened, as usual, at 9:00 AM. Clearly none of us had stayed the entire night in the parking lot to get a head start on our trip to the pool, so the facility put out a little handmade sign encouraging us to use the restroom if we needed.
We discussed when we should try to leave to go and check on the apartment. An older guy had told Futo that it was possible to get back to Tsukinoki through back roads, but there was no real guarantee that we would make it to our area. We had no way of knowing whether or not our apartment would be flooded, and the pool was a guaranteed bathroom, shower room, and source of water. We agreed that if the city lifted the evacuation order, we’d depart at noon and see if we could make it there. If it was blocked, we’d come back to the pool. This turned out to be an optimistic view of the roads and how crowded traffic was. Everyone was trying to get somewhere, but many roads were flooded. We would go down a road thinking that because it had returning traffic the road was open, only to find that the returning traffic was all U-turns as each car reached the point where the water was visible.
Getting back to the pool didn’t look very likely, but we’d passed one of the elementary schools serving as a shelter, so I suggested we stop there. Futo agreed and said we could park and then he could go to see the route he was considering on foot, to make sure it was passable. Just then, Shibata Town messaged my phone that since the various weather advisories had been lifted, they were going to close all of the shelters that day, at 5 pm. I’m trying not to sour on Shibata Town, but this alone makes it at least temporarily one of my least favorite places so far. Why robotically adhere to whether or not an advisory has been lifted when huge portions of the town are struggling to return to where they live? How many people gave up on going to shelters and forced their cars through flooded roads to try and get home? We’re not the only residents upset about the town’s trigger-happy need to shut down the shelters. Several Twitter users were pretty vocal.
We somehow managed to make it back, after a hair-raising adventure through a partially flooded road. There were no floating cars, both outgoing and incoming traffic were making it through, so we thought it would be all right but I spent a panicked five or so minutes going though scenarios about what we would need to do if the car stopped.
We were delighted to find that our apartment wasn’t flooded. Judging from the mud-colored parking lot and roads, not many areas escaped at least some flooding. The waterline, deeper than I had expected, was and is visible on a concrete wall lining our complex. Our real estate company came by to inspect our foundations by taking out the base of our little underfloor storage cubby, and everything looks fine. Still, just down the road there are apartment complexes with water-damaged furniture lined outside the door. The welfare facility has a team of workers digging out waterways choked with mud. A nearby hospital further away was flooded by over a meter and is desperately trying to haul every waterlogged thing out of the first floor to resume operations. I biked over yesterday to volunteer there and spent the morning stuffing bags and sorting garbage before they got wind of a possible electricity issue and canceled volunteering for the afternoon.
Which I guess brings us to now. I had intended for this blog to be a way for me to sort through and put into writing my memories of the March 11, 2011 disaster and my time spent on the coast afterward, and to record new memories of a hike I had been dreaming of doing for years. I had visions of moving forward and having an adventure and finding myself as a person. Growing and healing, etcetera. I had made the time to do this. Now I’m not sure where and when I can start hiking the trail again. For a night, I thought maybe I could restart my journey from the southernmost terminus in Soma, since I hadn’t heard much about damage there. The problem is, there are so many places that are so many varying levels of devastated that not having specifically heard about a place means next to nothing. Both Shinchi and Soma’s city websites are reporting that they have no running water throughout their entire city and are requesting donations of drinking water.
I’m unsure of what do to and struggling to not feel like a giant hand has descended from the sky to individually smash each of my dreams. I’m very much aware that we’re luckier than many people, but I also know that hopelessness and disappointment doesn’t magically disappear when you compare it to greater suffering.
I’m even regretting making this move to Miyagi, to a place we don’t know, surrounded by people we don’t know, leaving our support network behind, leaving trustworthy Oshu City behind for a town that can’t be bothered to find shelters on higher ground or keep those shelters open for five minutes longer than the manual says.
All I can do is remember the lessons that have been part of my life here since 2011. We have food, water, electricity, and shelter. We have money. We have information. We have transportation: bicycles, the car, and the trains are resuming service at least toward Sendai. We have time. I may be able to hike some less-damaged portions of the trail later this month or in November/December. I have my husband and my cat, our families, and our friends. We evacuate when they tell us to evacuate. We protect our lives. We advocate for ourselves. We help other people when we can, but we put ourselves first, as we should. I do not need to adhere to any Japanese norms of stoicism. I will cry when I need to. I will mourn when I need to. I will do whatever I need to do and want to do to get through this day and on to tomorrow. Today it was writing this.
My husband’s backpack on July 17, 2015 before its MCT debut
Something kind of symbolic of why I’m doing what I’m doing now is the upcoming first five days of my section hike, Kabushima to Kuji Station. I’ve actually already hiked this section, in 2015, about 4 years ago now.
There’s definitely something to be said for hiking the same trail again. I don’t want this to be about how much distance was covered and how long it took. I want it to be about the places themselves, about the season I went, the people I meet and rediscovery of the stories that I’ve told myself at least once before while translating these maps. So while I could have started my journey at Kuji, where I left off in 2015, I didn’t want to. I want to cover the same ground again, because it’s special every time. So in one way, maybe the most important way, it’s good to be doing this particular journey again.
On the other hand, it has been a full 4 years since I started hiking the trail. While I have hiked bits and pieces in this time, I had the best of intentions on hiking much much more, and I never did. It’s not because I didn’t have the time and it’s not because I didn’t have the money. It’s because the next thing I knew, time had passed, much in the same way that other things that matter to me get neglected as time passes.
Life for me is a delicate balance between the fact that nothing in particular is stopping me from getting hit by a bus at almost any moment and therefore I should do what I can while I’m here, versus the fact that nothing in particular is stopping me from getting hit by a bus and therefore I should think about this at night and be unable to sleep or function. By that, I mean that in my best times it might spur me forward and in my worst times it might prevent me from doing much except further the wine, Netflix and potato chip industries. In any case, recently I am on the good, proactive side of “a bus: it could hit me” so I want to do at least some of the things that I have always wanted to do and feel are worthwhile, like hiking this trail and spending time traveling with my parents.
My Michinoku 